Episode 33: Woodrow Hartzog on the dangers of regulating AI with half measures

Modern Law - Droit Moderne

We've been talking a lot about AI on the podcast and on CBA National, and one of the issues that keeps coming up is the challenge for a country like Canada in selecting the right approach to regulating AI risk.

It's not as if there's a single model out there. The EU is trying to set the gold standard for the world, much as it did with its GDPR privacy regulation. The US is contemplating various bills, but for the most part, it is applying existing laws and regulations through regulators like the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Board, and the US Department of Justice. These agencies have been instructed by the White House's executive order in October to follow eight guiding principles for AI safety. Meanwhile, China's approach is to ensure that all information generated by AI aligns with the state's interest. All are key players to watch as we try to understand where the future of global AI governance is headed. And today, we are going to take a closer look at a perspective coming from the US.

International privacy expert Woodrow Hartzog discusses the state of AI regulation in the U.S., his thoughts on the global dynamics at play, and his concerns surrounding the normalization of surveillance and our reliance on half-measures to save us from the potential harms of AI.

Hartzog is a professor at the Boston University School of Law, a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, and an affiliate scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, a non-resident fellow at the Cordell Institute at Washington University, where he's currently working on a project about AI half-measures in collaboration with Neil Richards.

Hartzog recently testified before the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary on the importance of substantive legal protections when it comes to AI. He’s been arguing that current AI policies and oversights are far too weak.”

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